American literature is unique in the number of voices
and cultures it conveys, giving it the power to transform opinions and
challenge stereotypes in both obvious and subtle ways. Christa
Smith Andersonexplains that
Native American ancestry has been infused into modern
literature with ancient sounds.

N. Scott Momaday, Leslie
Marmon Silko, and Louise
Erdrich are among the many writers of
Native-American ancestry to use the languages of America’s earliest
inhabitants in contemporary literature. Erdrich, who grew up in North
Dakota of Chippewa and German-American descent, includes in her work
characters who “speak Indian,” as said in her novel, Love Medicine.
Before Lulu Nanapush, who is tired of “flat voices” and “rough
English,” returns home to the reservation, she thinks of her late
mother in terms of language: “I missed the old language in my mother’s
mouth. Sometimes, I heard her. N'dawnis, n'dawnis. My daughter,
she consoled me.” [1] When
Lulu
announces plans to visit Moses Pillager, a mysterious relative who has
isolated himself on an island near the reservation, Rushes Bear and
Lulu’s uncle Nanapush advise against it. Her uncle warns: “He doesn't
speak.” “I’ll talk Indian,” Lulu replies. When she goes to Matchimanito
to meet him, Moses starts to turn away from Lulu but can’t leave,
leading to the following exchange:

He reached toward my hair, closed his fist around a heavy curl,
then drew away his hand. Kaween onjidah. Don't be sorry, I
said.[2]

In House Made of Dawn, Abel learns about his
Kiowa ancestry…

N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of
Dawn traverses the Southwest and urban Los Angeles as the character
Abel learns about his Kiowa ancestry. Abel returns to Oklahoma’s Rainy
Mountain after the death of his grandmother, through the memory of her
stories learning the tribal history of the area. The summer of 1887 was
the last in which the Kiowa came together as a “living sun dance
culture” because they could find no buffalo in order to carry out the
sacrifice that involved impaling a bull head on a Tai-me tree. “That
summer was known to my grandmother as Ä'potò
Ètodà-de
K`àdò, Sun
Dance When the Forked Poles Were Left Standing.” [3]

Despite different ethnic backgrounds, a woman who visits Abel’s
dying grandfather, Francisco, in the hospital, puts Abel in mind of his
grandfather when she tells a story and Abel thinks: “Ei yei! A bear! A
bear and a maiden. And she was a white woman and she... you know, made
it up out of her own mind, and it was like that old grandfather talking
to me, telling me about Esdzàshash nadle,
or Dzil quigi, yes, just like that.” [4]

In a prayer ceremony, Momaday writes the dialects to be found in an
L.A. Pan-Indian rescue mission, as heard in the words of the characters
Cristóbal Cruz and Napoleon Kills-in-the-Timber. Part of
Cristóbal’s prayer is: “I know we all been seein’ them good
visions an’ all, an’ there's a whole lot of frenhood an’ good will
aroun’ here, huh? I jes’ want to pray out loud for prosper’ty an’ worl’
peace an’ brotherly love.” Napolean begins his prayer with, “Great
Spirit be with us. We gone crazy for you to be with us poor Indi’ns.”
Napolean starts to wail after he says, “The ol’ people they gone now...
They tol’ us to do it this way, sing an’ smoke an’ pray.”[5]

The opening and closing words of House Made of Dawn reflect
Native American storytelling tradition. The novel begins, “Dypaloh”
and ends, “Qtsedaba.” In Jemez tribal tradition of the
Southwest, the words indicate, respectively, the beginning of a story
and the ending of a story.[6]

The Frozen North

Alaskan Indian Mary
TallMountainconfronted stereotypes in her poem Indian
Blood
which appears in several anthologies. The opening stanza sets up a
performance in which the performer wears:

Beendaaga’ made of
velvet / crusted with crystal beads as Children's faces stared. / I
felt their flowing force. / Did I crouch like goh / in the
curious quiet?” ( Beendaaga’ is
mittens, goh is rabbit.) [7]

Christa
Smith Andersonholds an MFA in Creative
Writing from George Mason University and received her Bachelor of Arts
from the University of Virginia. After several years producing and
writing television news, she is now a federal government employee by
day and a fiction writer the rest of the time. She received the 2002
Cynthia Wynn Herman Scholarship from George Mason University and has
published non-fiction in So to Speak, a Feminist Journal of
Language and Arts.